An Unprecedented New Lawsuit Could Force Trump to Release His Tax Returns

For months on the campaign trail, Donald Trump said repeatedly that the only reason he broke precedent by not releasing his tax returns was because he was being audited by the I.R.S. As soon as the audit was complete, he promised, he would release the returns. Many rightly noted this made no sense, since a routine audit would not prevent him from making his financials public, fueling speculation that Trump’s returns might reveal unflattering details about the true scope and value of his businesses, or the extent of his charitable giving (or lack thereof).

The walk-back began earlier this month, when Trump held his first press conference since July. No one cared to see his returns, he told a group of reporters gathered at Trump Tower, and they wouldn’t learn much from them anyway. (In fact, 74 percent of Americans want to see Trump’s tax returns, according to a recent ABC/Washington Post poll. Four in 10 say they care “a lot” about the issue.) Then, the door was slammed firmly shut on Sunday, two days after the inauguration, when Trump’s senior adviser Kellyanne Conway flatly told ABC’s The Week that it’s not going to happen. “The White House response is that he’s not going to release his tax returns,” she said. “We litigated this all through the election. People didn’t care. They voted for him.”

For the majority of people who do care, however, there might still be a way to see Trump’s taxes—whether he wants to release them or not. According to The New York Times, a group of former White House lawyers, constitutional scholars, and prominent litigators are filing suit against President Trump in New York federal court on Monday, claiming that he is violating the Constitution by letting foreign governments pay to stay or rent space in his hotel and buildings. The group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), alleges that such payments violate the Emoluments Clause, prohibits presidents from accepting gifts or payments from foreign entities. The clause was put in place by the framers out of concern that the nation’s leaders could be bribed by European powers with deep pockets seeking influence in the U.S.

The Emoluments Clause is “no relic of a bygone era, but rather an expression of insight into the nature of the human condition and the preconditions of self-governance,” the complaint, obtained by The Washington Post, claims. “And applied to Donald J. Trump’s diverse dealings, the text and purpose of the Foreign Emoluments Clause speak as one: this cannot be allowed.”

Trump’s tax lawyer has a different interpretation of the law. Brought up during Trump’s press conference to explain how he would separate himself from the management of his businesses, Sheri Dillon claimed that since a hotel stay involves a fair-market exchange wherein an individual pays for a service, it cannot be thought of as a gift. Even so, she said, Trump had agreed to donate profits generated by foreign officials staying at his hotels to the U.S. Treasury. “No one would have thought when the Constitution was written that paying your hotel bill was an emolument,” she argued.

Of the lawsuit, Eric Trump told the Times that the soon-to-be-filed lawsuit is “purely harassment for political gain,” and that the company has taken more steps than required in order to stay within legal bounds. “Frankly, I find it very, very sad,” he said.

Others, though, find it smart, particularly because it means that the lawyers filing the claim could request the president’s tax returns in order to fully assess the payments, loans, and income he takes in from foreign governments, according to the Times. Those documents could be made public as part of the lawsuit.

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Still, there is a long legal road ahead for the watchdog group. In order to move forward with its complaint, CREW will have to prove that it has standing to sue—that it has been hurt by Trump allegedly violating the Emoluments Clause. The Post reports that the group will argue it has been forced to divert “essential and limited resources—including time and money—from other important matters that it ordinarily would have been handling to the Foreign Emoluments Clause issues involving Defendant, which have consumed the attention of the public and the media.” A competing hotel or rental building might have a stronger claim to standing if it argued that it is losing business because customers are opting to stay at Trump properties to curry favor with the president.

That it could take a lawsuit to get a glimpse of Trump’s tax returns highlights the troubling new precedent the president has established by dismissing a critical bulwark against unethical behavior. But it is Trumpian in its approach. The president, after all, often bragged about taking advantage of the tax code in order to lessen his own bill. “That makes me smart,” Trump said in a debate in September. Figuring out how to force a president to show his tax returns through a lawsuit over a clause in the Constitution filed on the first business day of his presidency? That seems pretty smart, too.

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Photograph by Gina LeVay.

Annie Warriner, 13, Madison, WI

Her greatest fear: “That my education will be destroyed and I will no longer be allowed to attend colleges that I would like to, or that their quality will go down because of budget cuts, and stuff like that.”